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Do you enjoy gardening? Did you know that just going outside to work on your garden can have an impact on water pollution?
When you use chemicals on your lawn or on your plants, rain can wash it down into the storm drain. You may not use a lot of chemicals, but 500,000 residents fertilizing their lawn on Saturday can cause a problem when it rains on Sunday morning. Since storm drains flow directly into the ocean, the chemicals that we use on our lawn can end up polluting our ocean.
Here are some home gardening tips to prevent storm water pollution:
- Use pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers only as-needed. This will save you money and help reduce the chances of rain washing it down the storm drain.
- After mowing your lawn, pick up the grass clippings and throw them in the trash so the rain does not send them into the storm drain. Fertilizers and grass clippings can cause algae blooms, which use up all the oxygen in the water. This harms fish, coral and stream life because they cannot survive in water with low oxygen levels.
- Use rain barrels to collect rainwater from rooftops in mosquito-proof containers. The water can be used later on lawn or garden areas. This also prevents gravel and oil from your roof from getting into the storm drain system.
- When you’re planning out your garden, design areas with native plants to provide natural places for rainwater to collect and soak into the ground. Rain from the rooftop or paved areas can be diverted into these areas rather than into storm drains.
- Use native grass or plants along the edge of roadways or streams. When it rains, these plants work well to trap any excess chemicals or dirt in the rainwater as it flows across driveways and streets, ensuring that less of these harmful substances are flushed into our ocean.
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